This artist’s book is the book-form of a work by Matt Mullican, “The Meaning of Things (who feels the most pain?)” (2014), consisting of 676 collages and texts on sheets of standard printing paper.

At the approximate center of each collage is a small image that appears to be a printout of an image procured from the Internet. Around the images are hand-drawn, quasi-calligraphic marks (in black only), curved, giving the impression of an “organic” form in the manner of ornate, rococo frames. The series develops a narrative of interests, practices and collective representations that suggest and disavow each other. Mullican deftly challenges this simple to-and-froing of “virtual” and “real” by suspending the idea that only through the material/physical printing out of the digital images, the content of the images is “restored” back into the “real”—to grasp the “meaning of things” comes at the price of “feeling the most pain”.

Working in the fields of performance, installation, digital technology and sculpture, Matt Mullican (born 1951 in Santa Monica, lives an works in New York) is seeking to develop a cosmological model based on a personal vocabulary combining the formal and the symbolic. Hypnosis and cartography are his principal modes of operation. He explores functional sign systems of his own devising through activities under hypnosis, in a permanent oscillation between the real and its schematization, between fiction and its physical reality.

这本艺术家的书是Matt Mullican的作品 “The Meaning of Things (who feels the most pain?)”的书籍形式。(2014)，由676幅拼贴画和文本组成，印在标准印刷纸上。

在每张拼贴画的大约中心位置是一个小图像，似乎是从互联网上采购的图像打印出来的。在图像周围是手绘的准书法标记（只有黑色），弯曲的，给人一种 “有机 “形式的印象，就像华丽的洛可可风格的框架。该系列作品发展了一种兴趣、实践和集体表征的叙事，它们相互暗示又相互否定。Mullican巧妙地挑战了这种 “虚拟 “和 “真实 “的简单来往，他认为只有通过数字图像的物质/物理打印，图像的内容才能 “恢复 “到 “真实 “中–掌握 “事物的意义 “是以 “感觉最痛苦 “为代价的。

在表演、装置、数字技术和雕塑领域工作，Matt Mullican（1951年出生于圣莫尼卡，在纽约生活和工作）正在寻求在结合形式和象征的个人词汇基础上发展一个宇宙学模型。催眠和制图是他的主要操作模式。他通过在催眠状态下的活动探索他自己设计的功能符号系统，在真实和它的图式化之间，在虚构和它的物理现实之间永久摇摆。